Sister Schneiders says the trendy sisters have “given birth to a new form of religious life.” Read it here.
At least they now admit it. The trendy sisters in mini-habits are doing something which isn’t really Catholic anymore. Sister says she’s not really very concerned about the new investigation into women’s religious orders that is going on.
To tell the truth, I’m not real concerned about the trendy sisters. They think they’re modern, but they’re really ancient. I mean they’re old. I don’t have anything against pious old ladies–the church runs on pious old ladies. The problem is, these sisters behave not like pious old ladies, but trendy young things.
They should stop and take a long hard look at themselves. Their experiment hasn’t worked. Sisters left in droves once things started to change. Their orders are collapsing. Neither have they got new vocations. Good Catholic girls don’t want to join orders like theirs. Meanwhile the traditional orders are attracting lots of young vocations.
The persistence of the trendy sisters doing the same old tired thing is the same sort of lunacy as all liberal madness. “Our trendiness and dissent and new age kookiness isn’t attracting the young. I guess we weren’t trendy enough, dissenting enough and kooky enough. I know, let’s support homosexuality and ‘earth magic’ too…
Come on Fr. quit drudging up the same old arguments again and again. Let’s talk about what is happening now. Women’s roles have shifted dramatically in the last 100 years. Somehow we think that everything was so grand when there was vocations coming from I am sorry, but the good ole days were not so good for everyone. I think we have to truly look at the true causes in the shifts of religious orders and not just the issues of trendy sister. Women do have a voice and a mind and given a few years, I think those traditional orders will discover what it means to be a religious group in the 21st century. I think we have the impression that just because we see young women joining very conservative traditional orders, that somehow traditional orders are the answer to our problems. They are not in a sense. We will continue to have issues with women religious if we continue to think that they need to return to the way things used to be. If that is the case, I am sorry I will remember the past, yes; but I will not live in the past because the good ole days were not that good for some of us. R
Af Se why don’t you discuss the post itself? I never said making the trendy sisters go back to the old ways was the answer.Neither do I think that young sisters in traditional orders are the answer to all the church’s problems.However, they are the answer to the crisis in women’s religious orders. You are right that if modern young women want to change the world they can. They can just get a career and be Christ’s servant as a laywoman in the world. Fine. That’s wonderful.Or they may wish to pursue the religious life. If so, they want the real thing. They don’t want to join a group of aging lefties who should have done what their honest sisters did and just left the order to pursue good works in the world as laywomen.They want to belong to a community that lives together and is devoted to prayer, discipline and a life of holiness. For that they want a traditional order, and God bless them.
Fr. L, Without dalay, you must take a look at the St. Cecelia Dominican sisters’ community in Nashville, which isn’t that far from Greenville. You will get a fresh take on “ancient and modern,” so be sure to take your camera with you.
jedesto, we are lucky to have four of the Nashville Dominicans running our school at St Mary’s Greenville where I am an assisting priest
The way it looks to this 51 year-old Catholic is that the current young Catholic women are voting with their lives as to which approach to the religious life appeals to them.Fr. L doesn’t have to dredge up any arguments, he just has observe what’s happening.
I think it is just flat out off the rails if you ask me. One of the aims of any orders is to toss of the trendy. Trends come from the world system, and ought to be done away with for anyone seeking such a life. They are really just trying to be a little of both, and a man/woman can’t serve to masters. I personally am offended by this and think that the particular picture is immodest.I know I am coming from a different angle here, but hey that is my 2 cents!-g-
Reading the comments on the ncr site effusing praise on her makes me want to vomit. The audacity to treat people sent by the Vatican as “uninvited guests.” Honestly, I wish these people would just admit their Protestantism and be done with it already.
“The big difference is that they [apostolic Religious Congregations] read Perfectae Caritatis and did what it asked: deepened their spirituality (I hope), and did some updating — shorter habits, a more flexible schedule, dropping customs that were merely weird, etc. We read Perfectae Caritatis through the lenses of Gaudium et Spes and Lumen Gentium and we were called out of the monastic/apostolic mode and into the world that Gaudium et Spes declared the Church was embracing after centuries of world rejection.”Hermeneutic of rupture, anyone? Can anyone, reading this statement, not “get” that the Council did not permit “trendy shamanistic priestess” sisters? Heck, they ADMITTED IT THEMSELVES! They don’t really “subscribe” to the Vatican Council, but to their imagined version of what happened.
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You can learn a lot about yourself by who supports your comments. Read this comment supporting the good sister.”Yes, it is refreshing to hear the truth frankly stated by someone still trying to do Christ’s work inside the Church. Thank you Sister.A year ago I was blessed to find a loving “unauthorized” Catholic community headed by a woman engaging in “unauthorized” ordained ministry as a Roman Catholic Woman Priest.I am now more at peace and in closer contact with God than at any time in my life. Sandra is absolutely right. The institutional Church has always resisted the new in Religious Life, especially among women, but the new will continue to happen with or without hierarchial approval. We are simply following the example of Christ, who went about His work in spite of the hostility of the canon lawyers and institutional religious leaders of His day.”
“It is refreshing to hear the truth frankly stated by someone still trying to do Christ’s work inside the Church.”I think it is an error to speak on God’s behalf arbitrarily. Also, it is okay to take scenes from religious history to make a point, but every analogy made does not speak authoritatively. That Jesus spoke out against the religious authorities in his earthly days as a comparison to what the Catholic laity must do to their hierarchy collapses a gross amount of evidence. “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age (Matthew 28:18-19).” For the Eleven to continue in His Word, the first apostles baptized members of every nation and taught them everything the Lord Jesus taught them. If this office continues in Apostolic succession and is made present to us in bishops in union with the bishop of Rome, this woman is a heretic. John Paul the Great spoke authoritatively when he said it is not possible for women to be priests. That she has done this anyway does not speak well of her and it is folly to attend her liturgies. She carries no authority of her own and grasping at it like Simon the Magician brings condemnation. “After a first and second warning, break-off contact with a heretic, realizing that such a person is perverted and sinful and stands self-condemned” (Titus 3:10-11). Please follow the Lord Jesus’ command, “Repent and believe in the gospel.”
Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and for ever (Heb 13:8). The truths of our faith do not need constant changing. The treasured Tradition of our faith was revealed to us by God through His Church and needs to be presented constantly to each generation, but it does not need to be changed in content in order to make it acceptable to any particular generation. Religious (monks and nuns) have been with us since the early centuries of Church history. They have adhered to vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and have lived a strict life of prayer and worship. Too many modern religious are failing to uphold the age old virtues of their calling. They are not adhering to a strict prayer and worship routine and they are not wearing a habit which is a public witness to the faith. Too many modern sisters are members of the feminist sisterhood, disliking the roles God has given to the sexes and resenting the God ordained authority structure in the Church.The result – the almost total collapse of many religious orders. Order after order is dying out. Their abandonment of the rules of prayer life, their abandonment of distinctive habits and their abandonment of the teachings of the Faith have been their death knell. However, there is hope! During World Youth Day here in Sydney the magnificent sisters from the New York Sisters of Life were a fantastic witness to the faith – young, holy in their worship and wearing full habits and veils. Similarly the Dominican Sisters of St Cecilia from the United States were a wonderful witness and are in fact now establishing a Convent here in Sydney.Sister Trendy is NOT the answer. Holy, obedient, prayerful sisters and brothers will help revitalise the whole Church.
Veritas is right. Afro Seminarian seems perpetually concerned with the world’s fashions and always at pains to “keep up”. John Michael sends a comment by someone who has “found peace” in rebellion against the Church. I suppose there can be a type of “peace” when one ceases to struggle against temptation and simply surrenders to the world’s view, giving up the Church’s view. I have seen that peace settle on the faces of some addicts and I know they’ve given up, and I will hear of a death by overdose soon.Before he became our Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger said the mission of the Church is to *become* holiness in [an unholy] world. That’s about it, really.Social/cultural/political/economic concerns are not the business of the Church. The business of the Church is holiness.As for this or that which confronts us daily, hourly, well–tend to it. If it’s a sink full of dirty dishes, wash them. If it’s someone in need, meet the need. If it’s a call to prayer, pray. But if it’s an invitation (or an insistence) to jump on some bandwagon, back off. It’s not coming from the Holy Spirit within, but from another spirit without, one who in his most modern guise wears a complexion of self-righteous moral superiority. (It’s the latest fashion in pride.)
“Before he became our Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger said the mission of the Church is to *become* holiness in [an unholy] world. That’s about it, really.Social/cultural/political/economic concerns are not the business of the Church. The business of the Church is holiness.”Through one of those little coincidences that aren’t, I happened to open my Lenten read, Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict, to my last stopping point and found I was at the chapter on the temptation of Jesus this morning!The Holy Father gives a beautiful explanation about this temptation to think “bread” and feeding the hungry are our first priorities and says that those thinking they can create a perfect world are the “willing dupes of Satan.” I won’t try to summarize it–I couldn’t begin to do it justice–but it speaks to your comments exactly, and I wish that the Sister Schneiders of the world would read it!
I have to say i do agree with Veritas on this one, i was brought up Catholic and went to Catholic school, and was tought by the good sisters of that day,they were kind, strict,patient,loving,stern,and always did what they could to make things better,they tought us to pray, and yes even to laugh!They wore full habits, some had slightly more modern ones for the 1970’s,but you always knew when a sister was near you by the holy habit they wore,maybe a bit modern for some of the younger sisters, but never a habit that showed their curves,and that was and still is proper in my view.I have no doubt that the new Trendy sisters that wear no habit are trying to do good, and many i am sure do…but i just do not feel the same way about them as i do when i see a nun in a full habit.To me street clothes are for people not in a religious order, and i feel so many wonderful women that honored , and still do honor the full habit deserve the respect and gratitude for all they have endured to wear the habit,and were Proud to wear it, that’s the trouble with today’s trendy nuns, they do not feel proud to wear a full habit, and i think the Catholic church is wrong to let them not wear it if they choose to be a nun in any religious order.Sorry but when i see a sister in full habit, it makes me feel like i did when i was a kid around the sisters..happy,on my best behavior and proud to be Catholic!Trendy sisters that wear no habit are missing the mark in my book!
The ‘trendy’ Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Kentucky decided to close my daughter’s high school here in Massachusetts. My daughter just had one year to go so now instead of looking at colleges, she needs to find another high school for her senior year. A coincidence that the average age of the sisters in that order is 71? I think not…